20 years after genocide, Rwanda safe, clean, undemocratic

"Do not forget the genocide," said the voice of a state
broadcast announcer in Kigali crackling through a cheap car radio, referring to
the organized slaughter 20 years ago of more than 10 percent of the population.
"We are all one now," he said, speaking in Rwanda's common language of
Kinyarwanda, and meaning that Rwandans no longer identify themselves as being
either Hutu or Tutsi.

Shelves of human skulls of all sizes rest in a memorial
beneath the former Catholic Church in Ntarama, just a short drive from Kigali. In
1996, two years after the genocide, I visited
a church in the south in Nyamagabe on a verdant hilltop scented by nearby
Eucalyptus trees. Inside the church, bits of flesh and hair were still
decomposing, giving off a stench that seemed to fill my nostrils for days.

Today Rwanda is a remarkably different nation. The streets
are clean with hardly any litter or cigarette butts. The government has gone green,
banning plastic bags to the point of treating any found in luggage as
contraband. The nation seems safe. Back before the genocide, a Western relief
worker told me he did not like posting women near Army bases for fear they
might be raped. Today common crime is rare, as soldiers patrol Kigali's streets
with Chinese "Bullpup" automatic rifles.

But Rwanda is also more politically closed now than before. Back
then, opposition activists were organizing their own political parties. They
were seeking to fill a space, a few told me, between the government led by the Hutu
president and former military officer, Juvenal Habyarimana, and a
then-threatening guerrilla movement led by a Tutsi exile named Paul Kagame.

A few independent
journalists like Sixbert Musangamfura were active, too. He ran the critical
Kinyarwanda-language weekly Isibo,
and managed to dig up dirt on each the Hutu-led government and the Tutsi-led
guerrillas. Today, however, it is hard to find any active journalists inside
the nation, as journalists have either fled into exile or been intimidated into
self-censorship.

The government began cracking
down on the independent press in the late 2000s in advance of presidential
elections. The country's once-leading independent newspaper, Umuseso, was suspended during the
electoral campaign while its editors faced various criminal charges. They fled
into exile to launch a new independent weekly, The Newsline. Rwandan authorities ordered officials to confiscate
any copies found at border crossings. Rwandan courts have tried
and sentenced other exiled editors, such as Jean Bosco Gasasira of the
online weekly Umuvugizi, who was
sentenced in absentia to years in jail over a column critical of Kagame.

Agnés
Uwimana and Saiditi Mukakibbi ran the independent, Kinyarwanda-language
bi-monthly Umurabyo until they were
arrested in 2010. Convicted on charges including defamation and "genocide
denial," they had reported critically on agricultural policies; the 2010 murder of
another independent journalist, Jean-Léonard Rugambage; and now-President Kagame's falling out with some
of his former military comrades, including an ex-spy chief--who, more recently,
was found strangled to death in South Africa.

No case may better show Kagame's attitude toward dissent. Journalists began tweeting
about possible Rwandan government involvement in the ex-spy chief's murder, prompting
a Twitter account impersonating the South African jurist Richard Goldstone (spelled
"Goldston" on the account) to try and discredit them through personal attacks. Suddenly,
during the heated exchange, the vitriolic comments were no longer coming from
the Goldston account but from Kagame's official Twitter account, as if he had hit the
wrong button on his computer. The government later admitted some
responsibility, saying the Goldston account had been "run by an employee in the
Presidency."

Kagame is a tall,
elusive man who led the guerrilla force that stopped the genocide back in 1994
without any help from the international community. This feat still allows him
to claim a level of moral authority. Kagame is a descendant, like many of his
ruling comrades, of exiled Rwandan Tutsis. They fled into Uganda and other
neighboring nations following a violent Hutu takeover in the years leading up
to Rwanda's independence from Belgium in 1962.

Three decades later, Belgium distanced
itself from the Habyarimana regime as evidence mounted of its human rights
abuses. France, however, rushed
in arms and advisers to defend its Francophone military ally. Today another
change in Rwanda is that English and not French is the nation's other official
language after Kinyarwanda, and French is strangely barely spoken anymore, even
in Kigali.

Today when Rwandan state broadcasters declare that Rwandans
no longer identify themselves as either Hutu or Tutsi, they help reinforce a
common, national identity that is no doubt essential to healing genocidal
wounds. The fact that both Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis speak the same language,
Kinyarwanda, also helps. But the government's claim of Rwandan unity also glosses
over one inconvenient fact. Roughly 84 percent of Rwanda's population is Hutu,
according to sources like the annual The New York Times Almanac, and
about 15 percent is Tutsi.

Rwanda's demographics have changed only slightly since the
genocide. An estimated 800,000--people mostly Tutsi civilians, along with
thousands of Hutu moderates and their families--were killed in less than 100
days in 1994. Over the years since, hundreds of thousands, or perhaps the same
number of Tutsis whose parents or grandparents fled Rwanda back during the
violence surrounding independence, have since
repatriated to the nation.

"I love him so much," said Genereuse about Kagame. A young
woman running a business in Kigali, she said her family fled Rwanda back in the
early 1960s over the nation's "ethnic problems." She freely identified herself
as being Tutsi.

"This is not something we talk about any more," said Francois,
referring to the divide between Hutus and Tutsis. He served as a soldier in the
previous, Hutu-led government during the genocide. "Talking can get you in
jail," he said.

Modern Rwanda is in many ways a progressive nation looking
to curb corruption, promote development, and protect the environment. But it is
by no means a democracy, and it is a nation without a free press.

Comments

Thanks CPJ for such a balanced article about Rwanda: 20 years post genocide. I liked Frank's thoughts on Rwanda's democratic journey and the the independent media situation-both topics that are rarely spoken about within and without Rwanda. Unless Rwanda stops hunting down and killing opposition, starving independent media of adverts and commercials so they can grind to a halt and running a wild cosmetic media campaign to cover its trail in a series of murders of Rwandan dissidents accross Africa and beyond the country is just bracing for another wave of violence as steadily joins the league of worst dictators Africa has ever seen.
While i have high regard for hardworking Rwandans who have struggled through their wisdom and skills to place Rwanda where it is now on the global index, i hardly have any admiration for President Kagame because he is a cold blooded killer who has turned the country into killing fields, has grossly suppressed the oposition, denied many young Rwandans a chance to a decent upbringing by either exiling or killing their parents. The Rwandan President has invested much his energies and resources hunting his possible challengers in the arena of politics such members of the Rwanda National Congress and creating foreign bank accounts where he transfers stolen national resources from personalised national executive jets, Agaciro Fund (Diaspora remittances to support government programs), illegally confiscated private businesses such as Union Trade Centre and illegal tenders esp. in infrastructure, power dams, mining and Gas. Mr Kagame is no more than a power hungry and crafty underperformer with insatiable apetite for inflating Rwanda's growth statistics, manipulating the international community/Leaders, fighting truth, human rights, Peace, Justice and Democracy.

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